QUESTIONS 1) "Designing Women," which enjoys a reunion special Monday, July 28, on Lifetime, was semi-inspired by what earlier CBS sitcom starring Dixie Carter and Delta Burke as squabbling Southern in-laws Carlotta and Kathleen Beck? 2) "Designing Women" was set in Atlanta, but the building that provided the exterior shots of the Sugarbaker design firm actually is located in what other city closely associated with series creator Linda Bloodworth-Thomason? 3) The real-life...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Actor Meshach Taylor, best known for his role as the affable assistant on the hit television show "Designing Women," has died at age 67, Los Angeles media reported on Sunday. Taylor died Saturday near Los Angeles "after bravely fighting a terminal illness," his agent Dede Binder told the Hollywood Reporter. "His loving family was by his side. " On Friday, Taylor's family posted on his Facebook page that he had begun to slip away. "It is with...

Getting back at all the tabloid gossip about Delta Burke's extra poundage, CBS` "Designing Women" has set Dec. 11 for the episode that tackles the issue head-on. In "They Shoot Fat Women, Don`t They?", former beauty queen Suzanne (Burke) attends her high school reunion, where she overhears a former schoolmate say: "I used to think she was gorgeous, but now we`re talking Roseanne Barr country." Burke plans to hit the talk-show circuit to promote the episode.

One show-biz adage says always leave 'em wanting more. A better one says if you land a hit, cling to it like Colonel Tom Parker to Elvis. Paula Abdul's departure from "American Idol" brings to mind other people who quit TV shows before it was vocationally prudent: Shelley Long: The grandmommy of this category, she fled the mega-hit sitcom "Cheers" for a movie career. Go ahead, check imdb.com. Craig Kilborn: Kilborn left "SportsCenter" and wound up with CBS' "Late Late Show."

"You need someone to love you while you're looking for someone to love." --Shelagh Delaney "I cannot abide the 'Mr. and Mrs. Noah' attitude, 'the animals went in two by two, forever stuck together with glue.' " --Vita Sackville-West "If you want to say it with flowers, remember that a single rose screams in your face: 'I'm cheap!' " --Delta Burke "Whatever happened to the kind of love leech that lived in his car and dropped by once a month...

QUESTIONS: 1) Two decades before winning an Oscar for directing "Reds," this big-name star played rich boy Milton Armitage in the CBS sitcom "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis." Can you name him? 2) What 1988-97 sitcom alienated many of its fans with a bizarre final season that saw its blue-collar family hitting a lottery jackpot? 3) They played sisters on "Designing Women," but these two actresses previously played bickering in-laws in the 1982-83 CBS sitcom "Filthy Rich."

What goes around, comes around is an aphorism apropos to "Designing Women," the CBS sitcom about four women who work at an Atlanta interior decorating firm. After two cancellations and one time-period change, the show returns at 8:30 p.m. Monday on Channel 2, where it began last fall. In Monday's episode, Charlene (Jean Smart) meets Gaylon King, a hot-shot promoter who convinces her that she will be the next big Nashville music star. But Suzanne (Delta Burke), Julia...

Tackling an iconic character like Santa Claus poses risks for any actor. You just wouldn't think heatstroke would be among them. Yet that's exactly one of the biggest challenges John Goodman faced while starring in "The Year Without a Santa Claus," which premieres Monday on NBC. A live-remake of a Rankin-Bass animated special that first aired in 1974, the NBC movie broadly follows the original story line, which finds Santa (Goodman)...

CBS-Ch. 2 is making scheduling changes Monday. "Designing Women" moves to 7:30 p.m. with an episode in which Suzanne (Delta Burke) decides to room with Charlene (Jean Smart) when she's forced to pay back taxes to the IRS. Realizing the new living arrangement will never work, Suzanne heads to Atlantic City, where she hopes gambling can solve her problems. "Frank's Place" takes "Designing Women's" former time slot at 8:30 p.m. The episode is a repeat in which a...

QUESTIONS 1) "Playmakers," ESPN's first scripted series, debuting Tuesday, stars Omar Gooding as a gridiron star. Omar's brother, Cuba Gooding Jr., won an Oscar for a similar role in what 1996 movie comedy? 2) "Good Sports," a short-lived 1991 CBS sitcom, featured what real-life couple as a pair of bickering co-anchors of a TV show called "Sports Central"? 3) Which "Designing Women" star played an unlikely football team owner in the raunchy HBO comedy "1st and Ten"? 4)

Martin Mull will provide the voice of "Dad" on the new half-hour animated comedy series "Family Dog," now in production for future broadcast on CBS. The series, from executive producers Steven Spielberg, Tim Burton and Dennis Klein, centers on the day-to-day concerns and dog-sized adventures of a nameless family dog. Other voices are Danny Mann as the Family Dog, Molly Cheek as Mom, Zak Epstein as son Billy and Cassie Cole as daughter Buffy. Elsewhere at CBS, Delta Burke and Gerald McRaney will...

QUESTIONS 1) "Designing Women," which enjoys a reunion special Monday, July 28, on Lifetime, was semi-inspired by what earlier CBS sitcom starring Dixie Carter and Delta Burke as squabbling Southern in-laws Carlotta and Kathleen Beck? 2) "Designing Women" was set in Atlanta, but the building that provided the exterior shots of the Sugarbaker design firm actually is located in what other city closely associated with series creator Linda Bloodworth-Thomason? 3) The real-life...

"This is not the Roseanne Barr show. If anyone goes, it will be her, not us." -Harry Thomason, executive producer of "Designing Women," on reported grumblings on the set by actress Delta Burke. "You cannot enrage the public with the public's money." -Phyllis Berney, a member of the National Endowment for the Arts advisory council, on the anti-obscenity pledge required for future funding. "I play golf, not politics." -Golfer Fuzzy Zoeller, on the...

Asking Delta Burke what drew her to the role of first lady Judith Whitman in NBC's "DAG" invites a spirited spiel. "First off, it's a woman in my age category, early 40s," says Burke, whose show recently changed Tuesday night time slots, moving from 8:30 p.m. back to 7:30,where it's cushioned between "3rd Rock From the Sun" and "Frasier." "I come back to Hollywood, and all they are interested in is pubescence. I'm lucky to find somebody in my age category, much less...

Football stars O.J. Simpson and Marcus Allen were never teammates at Southern Cal, but they`ll play on the same side in a new HBO football sitcom, "Training Camp: The Bulls Are Back." The six-episode package, a sequel to last season's "1st & Ten," premieres at 9 p.m. Tuesday on the cable channel. Simpson, recently booted from the broadcast booth of ABC's "Monday Night Football," will play a veteran running back, with Allen, the standout halfback for the Los Angeles Raiders,...

It's mid-July. I'm at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pasadena, Calif., for the marathon fall TV press tour. I'm chatting with several other TV critics and guzzling a 10-ounce bottle of Sprite as I wait for the cast of "DAG," NBC's sitcom (8:30 p.m. Tuesdays, WMAQ-Ch. 5) starring David Alan Grier ("In Living Color") as a bumbling Secret Service agent and Delta Burke ("Designing Women") as a whip-smart first lady, to make their way on the ballroom stage. Everyone, it seems, is talking...

Joan Rivers is not really the brash, brassy broad she appears to be. Just ask her. In the October issue of Fame magazine, she says: "The public persona has nothing to do with the private. For some reason, nobody can accept that with me. They know that Pee-Wee Herman isn`t that way at home, and they know Jack Benny wasn`t cheap, but with me, they always turn around and say, `My God, you`re nothing like I thought!` " Says her daughter, Melissa: "People come up to me and say,...

"DAG": This one comes as a relief, not because of the quality of the show but because it marks, at last, the premiere of the last new series of the fall season (8:30 p.m., WMAQ-Ch. 5). On the topic of quality, though, it is right in keeping with the rest of NBC's new comedy series. Kind of a stink bomb. The series, from some "Just Shoot Me" and "Mad About You" writers, starts with a funny concept. David Alan Grier plays a Secret Service agent who becomes famous...

Would you please provide an address where I can write Pauly Shore? Given the general critical drubbing his current Fox comedy series has taken, he'd undoubtedly be happy to hear from any and all fans. You can send your correspondence to him in care of 20th Century-Fox Television, P.O. Box 900, Beverly Hills, CA 90213. - I like the series "Touched by an Angel," but they never seem to show the second half of any episode that says "To Be Continued" at the end. For...

Chelsea Stevens is one tough domestic goddess. "Let me give you some advice: When you deal with Chelsea, you always, always have to remember one important thing . . . she's a freak," a food stylist tells the new office manager working in Chelsea's empire in the promising new CBS comedy "Style & Substance." Chelsea (a nearly flawless performance by Jean Smart of "Designing Women") is a Martha Stewart-type consultant on all things beautiful and stylish, a cooking/decorating/entertaining monster whose...